Through my IMPACT residency at Bread & Salt, I will be creating, performing, and filming Datura, the next work in my ongoing poisonous plant dance series, which uses movement, wearable art, sound, and ritual to explore grief, personal transformation, and rebirth. This project emerges from meditations with poisonous plants—often feared or misunderstood, yet historically tied to healing—and translates those visions into embodied performance.
The series began with Morning Glory, which I created and premiered at the Mingei International Museum in May 2025 and later recorded at El Salon Theatre, San Ysidro’s first community theatre space that is also part of the multidisciplinary project Living Rooms at the Border and is in active partnership with Casa Familiar. The dance emerged from a meditation with the Morning Glory flower during the death of my husband. During the meditation, I experienced a vivid vision of myself being buried and becoming a skeleton, then rising to dance in celebration and ride through the sky on a horse made of vines—a symbolic rebirth from grief into transcendence.
The next piece, Datura, will unfold as a layered live performance alongside projected video. The projection will feature a recording of me as the Datura flower shapeshifting into various characters: a joker, Mickey Mouse, Eye, and Lips on a pole. During the live dance performance, the projection will play in the background while I will perform as myself in a handmade costume composed of vintage tulle, repurposed fabrics, and a 1930s dress. These materials carry histories of labor, femininity, and care; their fragility and endurance shape the movement vocabulary, and influence how my body vacillates between tension and release. The performance will be set to an original score created in collaboration with sound artist Demetrius Antuna, recorded specifically for this work.
This series began in the aftermath of my husband’s death and continues to investigate how the body processes grief through ritual, imagination, and transformation. Materials are selected with their histories in mind: vintage clothing and repurposed fabrics, my wedding veil (used in Morning Glory), and dried flowers, to name a few. The work is guided by personal experience and offers audiences a reflection on the cyclical nature of death and renewal.
During the Bread & Salt IMPACT Artist Residency, I will apply for upcoming performance opportunities, including Project [BLANK]’s Working Title Series, taking place in May 2026 at St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Bankers Hill, extending the life and reach of the project.
Through Datura, I aim to create a visually intimate and emotionally resonant performance that transforms private vision into shared experience—inviting audiences into a space where grief, vulnerability, and regeneration coexist. I invite audiences to share in an exploration of healing, transformation, and the delicate balance between vulnerability and resilience.
Read full Letter of Interest HERE.
Read Art CV HERE.
